Author: Jiro, Warden of the Wi-Fi Realm
Our Discord: https://discord[dot]gg/WfKqjeXN {replace [dot] with '.'}
They told me I died for three minutes.
Three minutes without air.
Three minutes with my heart still.
Three minutes with my soul somewhere else.
I don't remember the death.
I only remember waking up, strapped to a hospital bed, wrists burning, voice torn raw from screaming.
And the first thing I thought wasn't I'm alive.
It was Fuck. I failed.
The room smelled like bleach and rotting flowers. Machines blinked beside me, cold, uncaring.
Someone had written YOU ARE LOVED on the whiteboard across from my bed.
Big, stupid letters.
The kind of thing they tell corpses to make themselves feel better.
I lay there for days.
Until she arrived.
The girl with bruises under her eyes and a smile sharp enough to cut glass.
Sena.
The one who would teach me how to die properly
She was there on the fourth day. Just standing by the door. Like she was waiting for something to break.
Her hair was the color of smoke, long and tangled, like it didn't care about anything. Her eyes were the kind of pale blue that made you wonder if they were too tired to see. She smiled, but it wasn't a happy one. It was… knowing. Like she knew the way out of the maze, and didn't care if you followed or not.
"Hey," she said. "You're awake. Took you long enough."
I wanted to scream at her. Tell her to leave. To go back to whatever fucked up version of this world she crawled from. But something about her made it impossible to look away.
Sena leaned against the doorframe like she owned the room. "They told you, didn't they? You're still alive. You should be thankful."
Thankful?
For what? Another day in this shit? Another chance to choke on my own misery?
But I didn't say that. Instead, I nodded, barely able to find my voice.
"Come with me," she said, like it was the most natural thing in the world.
I couldn't move.
But I did anyway.
She led me out of the room, ignoring the nurses who told her to stay back. Ignoring the IVs, the monitors that should've been keeping me locked in. But I followed her because, somehow, I knew I would never have another chance to leave.
The city smelled like decay. Old buildings crumbled in on themselves, forgotten and filthy. But I didn't care. I followed her through narrow alleyways, past abandoned storefronts with windows smashed in, past places that used to be homes but now only had ghosts.
She led me to an old factory. Rusted metal doors hanging off broken hinges. The kind of place you don't go into unless you've given up everything.
"Don't you ever wonder what it's like to be dead?" she asked, lighting a cigarette. The smoke curled into the air like it didn't belong.
"I tried to be dead," I said, bitterness through. "What's the point of wondering?"
Sena tilted her head, her gaze sharp, cruel. "Because you're here now. You're still trying, even though you've got no reason to. That's why you're here. That's why I'm here."
I didn't understand. But I kept following.
We explored the factory for hours. She had this way of making me feel alive, not in a good way, not in a healthy way. But alive in the sense that I wasn't quite sure if I was losing my mind or if everything was just that fucked up. She pushed me to do things I never thought I would do.
We found a box of old photographs in the back of the factory. Dusty, water-stained, the kind of thing people leave behind when they run out of reasons to stay.
Sena picked one up.
A family.
A mother, a father, a little boy holding a plastic dinosaur.
Frozen smiles from a world that didn't exist anymore.
"Look at them," she said, her voice almost gentle. "Still pretending."
I didn't say anything.
There was a pit in my stomach, a twisting nausea I couldn't shove down.
These were real people.
These were real lives.
Not ghosts.
Not trash.
But Sena smiled.. that cruel, beautiful smile .. and pulled a lighter from her pocket.
"Let's set them free."
Before I could answer, she flicked it.
A tiny blue flame, dancing.
Waiting for permission.
She held the photograph out to me.
I stared at it… the boy's gap-toothed grin, the mother's tired eyes.
I could almost hear them laughing.
"You want to move on, right?" she said, her voice low, hypnotic. "Then you have to kill the past. Burn it down. Or it'll keep you chained."
I shook my head.
"This isn't ours."
Sena's eyes narrowed.
"Neither was your life. You threw it away, remember?"
The lighter trembled in my hand.
I hated her at that moment.. hated her more than I'd ever hated anyone.
Because she was right.
And so I pressed the flame to the corner of the photograph.
The edges curled, blackened, and turned to ash.
The boy's face crumbled first, vanishing into smoke.
Then the father's arms, the mother's smile.
Gone.
It felt like killing something sacred.
It felt like killing myself all over again.
The smoke wrapped around my face, and I choked, coughing into the rotten air.
Sena just laughed, the sound sharp and cruel and alive.
"You're learning," she said.
I wanted to hit her.
I wanted to set the whole world on fire.
Instead, I picked up another photograph
Sena crouched beside the smoking pile, picking at the ashes with her fingernail like she was searching for something she had lost a long time ago.
"You think you're the only one who tried to leave?" she said, voice almost too soft to hear.
"I just figured out how to live with the wreckage."
I hated her for it. Hated her for making me feel things I couldn't put back. But I loved her too. Not because she was kind, or even human. I loved her because she didn't want me to stay in that hospital bed. She didn't want me to die, not like that. She wanted me to burn with her, to forget about everything that was supposed to matter, and just live in the empty space between death and life.
She made me feel like I could.
But there was always that damn monitor on my leg.
A silent reminder of what was keeping me alive.
A weight I could never outrun.
It clicked every time I moved, like a countdown.
A clock is ticking down on me.
I tried to ignore it, to focus on her.
She was real, wasn't she?
One night, she took me to the edge of the city.
Where the streets fell apart, and the earth swallowed them whole.
A place no one remembers.
We scaled the fence of an old house, windows shattered like broken teeth. Weeds taller than us, growing in all the cracks.
Inside, the walls were peeling. The floors are soft, ready to fall through.
It smelled like rain and rot, like a place that had already died.
She found a box in the living room. Photographs. Old letters. Half crushed remnants of someone else's past.
Someone else's wreckage.
"Pick one," she said, tossing the box at my feet. Her voice was too quiet..
I stared at it.
My heart thudded against the monitor wrapped around my leg.
Green light, blinking steadily, stupid.. like the machine was alive when I wasn't.
"Why?" I whispered, barely louder than the wind.
"Because." She crouched down, a lighter flicking in her hands. "Everything you carry weighs you down. Burn something. Lose a piece of yourself."
My fingers trembled as I dug through the box. The smell of paper, mildew, something old.
I pulled out a photo.
A boy, maybe my age, holding a dog. Both grinning. Both whole. Unbroken.
It didn't fit here. Not in this house. Not with us.
I didn't want to burn it.
I wanted to put it back. Walk away from this goddamn place.
But she just stared at me. Eyes sharp, silent, watching me like she already knew what I'd do.
Waiting for the crack.
I lit the corner.
The flames caught the boy's face first, the dog's fur curling black, devoured by fire.
They turned into nothing in seconds. Ash.
Smoke.
I dropped the ashes. My hands shook so badly I couldn't hold them steady.
Sena didn't say a word.
She just laughed. A sound that wasn't hers. Something wrong. A low, broken thing that should've stayed buried.
The kind of laugh you hear when someone has given up.
"You think you're the only one who tried to leave?" she whispered.
"I tried too. I just… missed." Her voice cracked.
She flicked the lighter shut. Tossed it on the floor like it was nothing. Like we were nothing.
"And now I live with the wreckage."
I didn't know if she meant the house.
Or herself.
I didn't know if I wanted to know.
The monitor on my leg beeped once. Sharp, accusing.
It reminded me. Reminding me that I was still trapped, still breathing in this cage.
Still stuck.
Still alive.
Sena looked at the monitor, then back at me. Her eyes didn't soften.
"You're still chained," she said. "But if you want it badly enough, you can break anything."
I wanted to tell her she was wrong. That not everything could be broken. Some chains just weItsuki't meant to snap.
But I didn't say it.
Because something inside me wanted her to be right. Even if it meant I had to die trying.
But instead, I followed her into the darkness.
Because even broken things need something to believe in.
We walked until the houses fell away and the streetlights sputtered out. The world thinned around us.. the city bleeding into fields of black glass and broken fences.
Sena kicked a crushed can down the road, hands buried deep in her jacket. "You ever think about just… not coming back?" she said without looking at me.
"Every day," I muttered. Then louder: "Still thinking about it."
She snorted. "Coward."
I shoved her shoulder, not hard enough to knock her over, but enough to say fuck you without saying it. "Takes guts to stick around," I said. "You wouldn't know."
She turned, walking backwards in front of me, grin sharp enough to cut glass. "Oh? I stuck around. Just… not the same way you did."
I hated that grin. Hated how much I wanted to catch it in my hands and smash it and save it all at once.
"Stop acting like you're some kind of ghost," I snapped, stepping over a busted curb. "You're not dead."
Her smile faltered, just for a second. It was like watching a mask slip.
"No," she said finally. "Not dead."
She pulled a cigarette from her jacket and lit it with shaking hands. "Just misplaced."
We passed a rusted-out car half-swallowed by weeds. A couple of drunk guys stumbled out of a bar across the street, laughing too loud, too alive. One of them yelled something at us … something stupid … and I flipped him off without slowing down.
Sena laughed under her breath, smoke curling from her mouth like a ghost escaping.
"Real charming," she said.
"Fuck you," I said, but I was smiling.
The city buzzed under our feet. Neon signs flickered in the distance, half the letters burnt out. ARCO DIVE. BO KSTORE. A vending machine leaned sideways against a wall, still flashing DRINK ME like it was begging for mercy.
Everything here was falling apart. Everything except her.
"You act like you're so invincible," I said, catching up to her. "Like nothing sticks to you."
She gave me a look. That bittersweet smile again, crooked and tired and too beautiful to be real.
"You think this is invincible?" She tapped her chest, right over her heart. "Nah. I'm just better at hiding the cracks."
The monitor on my leg beeped once … a sharp, stupid sound that didn't belong in this world.
I wanted to rip it off. Smash it. Be free.
She saw the look on my face and laughed, but it wasn't meant this time. It was almost sad.
"You're doing better than you think, you know," she said.
"I feel like shit," I muttered.
"That's how you know you're alive," she said. "Dead things don't feel anything."
I opened my mouth to argue … to tell her she didn't know shit … but she just started running. Sprinting down the street barefoot, laughing like a kid with a death wish.
"HEY!" I shouted, taking off after her.
The monitor clicked against my ankle, the green light blinking like crazy.
"Catch me, coward!" she yelled over her shoulder.
And like an idiot, I chased her.
Past the broken cars, past the flickering signs, past the people who didn't even look up from their own wreckage. Past everything that was supposed to matter.
I didn't catch her.
Not really.
But maybe that was the point
We ran until our lungs burned and the pavement blurred under our feet.
Sena darted ahead, laughing so hard she had to clutch her sides. I pushed harder, ignoring the monitor digging into my ankle, the sharp clinking of the tracking cuff tripping up my steps.
"You're slow as shit!" she called back, half breathless.
"You're cheating!" I gasped. "You've got… crackhead powers!"
"Just better cardio, grandpa!" she shouted, veering down a side alley.
I followed, nearly eating shit when I skidded on some wet newspaper. Sena disappeared behind a dumpster, and for a second, I thought I'd lost her … until a hand shot out and yanked me by my jacket.
I stumbled into her, knocking both of us to the ground in a pile of limbs and curses.
"OW… fuck, you're heavy," she wheezed, pushing at me.
"Not my fault you're built like a soggy broomstick," I coughed, rolling off her.
She slapped my shoulder half-heartedly, laughing the whole time. We lay there for a second, sprawled across cracked concrete, the world spinning a little. Our chests rose and fell in sync, both of us too wrecked to move.
The stars were half-eaten by the city lights, but they were still there. Faint. Feral. Fighting.
Sena tilted her head toward me. "You almost caught me," she said, mock serious.
"Almost kicked your ass," I said.
"In your dreams."
I wanted to say something else … something that would wreck everything if I said it out loud … but before I could, the monitor on my leg beeped again. A shrill, ugly sound that cut straight through the quiet.
We both flinched.
Sena sat up, face shuttered, like someone had slammed the door between us.
The monitor blinked its stupid green light, smug. Still chaining me down. Still reminding me.
Something inside me cracked wide open.
Before I could think, I slammed my fist into it.
Once.
Twice.
Three times.
Plastic shattered under my knuckles. Wires snapped and sparked. The light flickered, then died.
Silence.
Real, thick, heavy silence.
Blood trickled from my hand. I curled my fingers into my palm and shoved it into my jacket pocket like it was nothing.
Sena stared at the wreckage of the monitor, then at me. Her mouth opened … maybe to yell at me, maybe to laugh … but instead, she just smiled.
Not that sad, twisted smile she wore like armor.
A real one.
Small. Bright. Dangerous.
"Finally," she whispered. "Took you long enough."
I shrugged, pretending my hand didn't feel like it was on fire.
"Guess I'm a slow learner," I said.
She nudged me with her knee. "You'll catch up."
And for once, I almost believed her
We stayed there longer than we should've, lying on the cold concrete while the city slept like something half-dead.
The night peeled back slowly and ugly, bleeding into morning.
That ugly, bruised kind of morning … pale gray light leaking over the rooftops, washing everything out like an old photograph someone left in the rain.
Sena sat up first, groaning.
"My back's gonna turn into a question mark," she muttered, stretching until something cracked loud enough to make me wince.
"Good," I said. "Might improve your posture."
She flipped me off without even looking. Real elegant. Real graceful. Like a dying cat.
I smirked, dragging myself upright too, and immediately regretted it. My muscles screamed, my hand throbbed, and the skin around my knuckles looked like hamburger meat.
I ignored it. Like everything else.
Sena squinted up at the sky, then shoved her hood over her head like the daylight personally offended her.
"We look like roadkill," she said.
"Speak for yourself," I said. "I look amazing."
She snorted so hard she almost choked.
"Yeah, sure, prince charming. Bet you smell like a hot dog left on a radiator."
"Only because I was running after you, crackhead."
She grinned … that wild, messy grin I didn't know how to survive … and then for a second, just… stayed still.
Watching me.
All the jokes peeled off her face, slow and clumsy, like someone learning how to be human again.
I didn't say anything.
Didn't dare.
Her fingers twitched like she wanted to reach for me, but didn't. Instead, she grabbed the hem of her jacket and twisted it between her hands, as if she let go, she'd shatter.
"Hey," she said finally, voice too light, too careful. "You know… if you wanna bail, I won't hold it against you."
She didn't look at me when she said it.
Like it'd hurt too much if she saw my face.
I blinked at her. Once. Twice.
Trying to figure out if she actually believed that … or if it was just another one of her half-assed lies to make leaving easier.
I leaned back on my elbows, squinting at the washed-out sky.
"Nah," I said. "I'm good."
She froze … just for a breath … and then gave me a lopsided smile.
One side brave.
One side scared shitless.
"Cool," she said, voice cracking slightly around the word. "Coolcoolcool."
We sat there, broken machines, still buzzing with things we weItsuki't saying.
The streets around us slowly woke up … the clatter of garbage trucks, the murmur of early commuters, the bark of some dog defending its ruined little kingdom.
The world moved on.
And for once, we didn't have to
We must've looked insane … two wrecks parked in the gutter while the city shook itself awake around us.
People gave us wide berths.
Smart of them.
Sena was the first to move again.
She shoved herself up, dusted off her jeans half-heartedly, and stuck out her hand toward me.
Like we hadn't just bled all night into the concrete.
"Come on," she said.
Voice light, like it wasn't asking anything bigger than standing up.
I grabbed her hand without thinking.
Her fingers were cold and cracked at the knuckles, but steady.
More real than anything else.
She tugged me to my feet, and for a second we just stood there … too close, breathing the same ruined air, tethered by nothing but stubbornness.
I could've kissed her.
Could've wrecked everything in a heartbeat.
Instead, she shoved something into my chest.
Another box.
Smaller. Beat to shit.
Held together with duct tape and bad intentions.
"What's this?" I asked, even though I already knew.
The edges of the cardboard were soft and damp, like it had been dragged through a storm.
"Yours," she said simply.
I stared at it.
Felt my stomach twist like it was trying to crawl out of my body.
"I don't…" I started, but she cut me off with a sharp look.
"You said you were good," she said.
"Prove it."
She sat back down, legs crossed under her like some stubborn kid who refused to leave recess.
Waiting.
Daring me.
I peeled back the tape.
Inside: scraps. Shreds. Ugly little pieces of me I'd worked real hard to forget.
An old hospital wristband, still smeared with dried blood.
A crumpled photo of my dad … drunk and smiling wrong.
A shredded letter from my mom, the words half-eaten by mold.
Things that didn't belong to who I was now.
Things that still owned pieces of me anyway.
My hands shook again.
Not from cold.
Not from weakness.
Just… too full.
Too full of everything I wasn't supposed to feel anymore.
Sena didn't say anything.
She just flicked her lighter open.
The flame danced between us … small and sharp and stupidly alive.
I picked up the wristband first.
Held it like it might bite me.
Then I tossed it into the flame.
It curled black immediately, letting out a tiny, ugly hiss.
Piece by piece, I fed the box to the fire.
Every item is heavier than the last.
Every memory biting down on my fingers before I could let go.
The letter stuck for a second … wouldn't catch.
I had to hold it there longer, watch the words warp and run like screaming things trying to escape.
My throat hurt.
My ribs hurt.
Everything hurt.
But I didn't stop.
When it was over, only ashes and melted plastic remained, smeared across the concrete like a crime scene.
Sena leaned back on her hands, head tipped toward the bruised sky.
She looked almost peaceful.
"You don't have to carry it if you don't want to," she said, so soft I almost missed it.
"Not forever."
I wiped my nose with my sleeve.
Felt stupid. Raw.
Human.
"Yeah," I said hoarsely.
"Guess not."
For a while, neither of us moved.
Just breathing.
Just existing.
Then, like she couldn't help herself, Sena bumped her knee against mine … just a little … like she was checking if I was still real.
Still there.
I bumped her back.
She smiled.
Small. Crooked. Real.
And for the first time in a long, ugly while, I smiled too
The city kept moving around us … cars coughing down broken streets, the wind scraping through empty gutters … but it all felt a little farther away now.
A little smaller.
Sena stretched her arms over her head, spine cracking like dry wood, then flopped back onto the concrete with a soft groan.
She patted the spot next to her without looking.
I hesitated … just a second … then lay down too, shoulder brushing hers.
Close enough to feel the heat bleeding off her jacket.
Close enough to know it wasn't an accident.
We stared up at the sickly morning sky together, a cracked plate of gray with no sun in sight.
"You ever think about what you'd do if you weItsuki't stuck here?" I asked, my voice scraping out low.
Sena was quiet for a long beat.
Then: "All the time."
"What's the plan, then?"
She snorted under her breath.
"Win the lottery. Buy a shitty motorcycle. Get lost somewhere nobody knows my name."
I huffed out a laugh. "Sounds like a shit plan."
"Better than yours, old man."
We fell into easy silence again, the kind that only happens when you've burned through all the ugly things and still stayed.
After a while, she shifted … not away, but closer … her head bumping lightly against my shoulder like she was too tired to keep pretending she didn't need anything.
It wasn't a big thing.
Not dramatic.
Just the weight of her, trusting me not to flinch.
I didn't move.
I just let her lean.
Let myself be leaned on.
Her hair smelled like cigarette smoke and city rain and something faint underneath, something warm.
Something hers.
I closed my eyes for a second, just breathing it in, letting the ache in my hand fade under the smaller, sharper ache blooming somewhere in my ribs.
"You smell like burnt plastic," she muttered against my jacket, voice muffled.
"You smell like a raccoon in a laundromat," I said.
She laughed … soft and real … and for a second, everything else faded.
The broken buildings.
The burnt-out neon.
The scars we didn't talk about.
Just two wrecks orbiting each other, stubborn and stupid and maybe a little bit alive.
"If she asked me to stay like this forever, I wouldn't even ask how long forever was."
She didn't move away.
I didn't either.
And it was enough.
It was more than enough
We didn't know it then …
Not me, not even the part of me that should have known …
But we were already on borrowed time.
It happened fast after that.
White walls.
Bright lights.
Voices too calm to be real.
The ground ripped out from under me when they told me.
That Sena … my Sena … had been dead for a year.
That I'd never caught up to her in that alley.
That there was no cracked grin, no cigarette smoke laughter, no stupid arguments about hot dogs and motorcycles.
That she was an echo, built out of scraps they stitched into my head.
A desperate experiment.
"To help you want to live again," they said, like it was a favor.
But I didn't hear most of it.
I just saw her …
Standing across the room, confused and scared and still so real …
While they handed me the knife.
The final phase, they called it.
Integration.
Acceptance.
They wanted me to erase her.
They wanted me to kill the thing that saved me.
My hands shook.
The broken one, the healed one … both useless.
Sena didn't beg.
Didn't cry.
She just looked at me with those cracked-glass eyes and smiled …
That crooked, defiant smile she always wore like armor.
"It's okay," she said, voice breaking like a bone under pressure.
"You were always supposed to leave me behind."
I wanted to scream.
Wanted to tear the walls down, tear my own heart out if it meant I could take her with me.
Instead, I raised the knife.
Because that's what they wanted.
Because that's what she asked for.
The blade went through her like smoke.
No blood.
Nobody is hitting the ground.
Just … gone.
Like she was never there at all.
And the world went silent.
I stood over her grave three days later.
No flowers.
No visitors.
Just a plain headstone half-sunk into the mud.
Sena Kuroda
2007…2024
"A shooting star nobody caught in time."
The sky above was washed out and cold.
The kind of sky that didn't give a shit if you lived or died.
I didn't cry.
I didn't move for a long time.
I don't know how long I stood there.
It could've been minutes. It could've been hours.
Time didn't mean anything anymore.
The rain thinned to a cold drizzle, soaking through my jacket, running down the back of my neck like icewater.
I was turning to leave when I heard it.
The cough of an engine .. rough, uneven .. cutting through the morning quiet.
A motorcycle limped down the road, wobbling a little on bad tires.
Rust was clinging to the frame like a second skin.
Exactly the kind Sena used to talk about.
A shitty bike, held together with stubbornness and duct tape dreams.
My heart kicked hard in my chest before my brain caught up.
The rider wore a hoodie too big for them, sleeves flapping loose in the rain.
For a split second .. just half a heartbeat ..
I thought it was her.
The way she used to slouch, all bones and defiance.
The way she might've flipped me off just for staring too long.
But the rider didn't even glance at me.
Just kept going, trailing exhaust and the echo of a dream that had never really been mine to keep.
Gone.
I let out a breath I hadn't realized I was holding.
Tasted the rust of it in the back of my throat.
Maybe grief makes you stupid.
Makes you see things that aren't there because you need them to be.
I curled my broken hand into a fist against the headstone.
Felt the edges bite my skin.
"I'll remember," I said, too low for anyone .. alive or dead .. to hear.
Not because it would save anything.
Not because it would bring her back.
But because it was the only thing I had left to give.
The motorcycle faded into the fog, swallowed by the city that never cared about either of us.
And I stayed a little longer, rain soaking through to the bone, until there was no one left to watch me.
I was alive.
Fully.
Ugly.
Broken beyond recognition.
And somewhere deep in my ribs … where all the old aches used to live … something was trying to stitch itself together again.
Not hope.
Not yet.
Just survival.
The ugly, brutal thing she taught me without either of us ever saying it out loud.
Sometimes love has to die for a person to live.
And survival costs everything.